


The Finer Points of Dog Ownership

by Sholio



Category: Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Banter, Dogs, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 20:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19342393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Some people get dogs. Some people have dogs inflicted upon them. (Follow-up toTempting Fate, in which Matt and Danny accidentally acquired/stole a couple of dogs.)





	The Finer Points of Dog Ownership

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to [Tempting Fate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18777316), but if you haven't read that one and don't want to read 9K of fic just to read this one, the important thing for purposes of _this_ fic is that Matt and Danny made friends with a couple of attack dogs and took them home.

"No," Jessica says when the door to her office opens (after several knocks go ignored) and she sees Danny there.

"You don't even know what I want."

"Maybe not, but I know the answer to whatever you want is no."

Danny just huffs out a little sigh and then he says, "Can I come in?"

He's already coming in anyway, so she says, "Whatever," and then frowns when she sees that he's not alone. There is is a very large dog padding along at his side, on a bright blue leash that Danny is holding neatly, wrapped around his hand. The dog is black and has a blunt head creased with scars. Jessica is pretty sure it's a Rottweiler, the biggest fucking Rottweiler she's ever seen, no less. 

The dog, if it is in fact a dog and not a small bear with a collar, opens its mouth and pants, displaying enough teeth to make a shark jealous. A stubby tail jerks a couple of times.

"This is Jessica," Danny says to the dog. "She's cool. She's a very nice person once you get to know her."

"Hello, still in the room," Jessica says flatly. "And it's _my room._ At least until I miss the rent one more time. Why are you here, Ironsides?"

She knows he's not the Iron Fist anymore -- word gets around -- but she says it anyway just to get a reaction, and then feels like shit when she sees him flinch. But then he smiles. 

"Did Matt tell you about our -- uh -- I think 'adventure' makes it sound like more fun than it actually was. Our thing? Upstate?"

"I heard a little about it," Jessica admits grudgingly, not really wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she's part of the whole New York vigilante information grapevine to quite the extent that she is.

"We came back with a couple of dogs."

"Yeah. I heard." Attack-trained drug-guarding dogs, from what she heard (from Malcolm, by way of Foggy, by way of Matt; because their friends all know each other now, and it's weird). 

"So, well, they've been staying with Matt, but it's really kind of a lot of dog for Matt to deal with, and Colleen said she'd _love_ to have a giant dog in the dojo in the tone that means she wouldn't actually love it, so ..." Danny holds out the leash. "I thought you might like to meet Giant."

"No," Jessica says.

"But," Danny says, and he kneels down beside the dog. Oh God, Jessica thinks, he's going to do the thing ... he's doing the thing. He wraps an arm around the dog's enormous scarred head and lifts it towards her. "But look at this face."

"Rand, why in the hell are you trying to give me a dog? You have approximately a zillion dollars. You can adopt out the damn dog to anyone you damn well want to give it to."

"I know," Danny says, and the earnest look he's giving her, especially side by side with the dog ... well, she's just gonna say, there's a resemblance. "It's just that, if I don't know the person, I don't know they'll be a good home for a dog. And Giant's had a terrible life, and deserves a really nice life, with a good person."

"You think _I'm_ that person?" she says, with a laugh.

"Yes. I think you'd be good for a dog, Jessica, and I think a dog would be good for you."

"I think you're a head case," she says, and turns to look at the dog, which is still wagging hopefully at her with its sorry excuse for a tail. "I'm very sorry you're having to deal with this," she tells the dog. "Rand, please leave my office before I throw you out the window."

"Don't you want to come for a walk with us and just see what it's like?"

She means to say no. She _really_ means to say no. So she isn't entirely sure how she ends up on the sidewalk with Danny showing her how to hold the dog's chunky blue lead. The dog stands politely at her side the whole time, rock still, just jerking its tail every once in a while and looking up at her occasionally.

"So his name is Giant, huh."

"Her," Danny says. "And, uh, yeah. Matt and I call her that. We aren't really sure what her previous name was, since her other owners ... um ... the Punisher basically killed them, so we didn't have a chance to ask."

"Great," Jessica sighs. "You're trying to give me a dog belonging to dead drug dealers; there's no way _that_ could end badly." She drops a hand to the top of the dog's head. It's a very weird experience petting this particular dog, because she's been around dogs somewhat, of the small, fluffy and/or retriever-ish variety (the type of dog that people typically walk on the street), so she knows what petting a dog is supposed to be like. This dog is not like that. It's like petting a block of wood covered in carpet, with seams of scar tissue like ropes twisting beneath the fur. However, as soon as she starts scratching its head it leans against her leg, and _fuck._

"Maybe she could just spend the night with you, so Matt can take a break?" Danny offers hopefully.

 

*

 

It turns out that Danny has a dog bed, a box of dog toys, and a 40-lb bag of dog food in the trunk of his car. She _knew_ she should have locked her office door today, but it tends to keep the clients out when she does that.

Fucking Danny Rand. 

 

*

 

"Malcolm!"

"Whoa, hey, nice doggie," Malcolm says a little nervously, which is the first point in this entire canine experience that Jessica actually realizes that a scarred Rottweiler weighing almost as much as Jessica does, with a head as wide as its body, is actually a little bit intimidating. "Wait a minute, is this one of the drug dealer dogs?"

"Stop looking like that, it's not going to eat you," Jessica says impatiently. "Want a dog? It comes with dog food and everything."

"Pets aren't allowed in our building."

Jessica shakes the leash. Giant pants quietly. "You really think anyone is going to argue with a dog like this?"

"Uh ... I'm pretty sure that's the kind of dog they're trying to keep out." Malcolm kneels cautiously and holds out a hand to the dog, who sniffs it with her broad nose and then offers a tentative but very wet lick with a tongue the size of a dish towel. (The first time she tried that on Jessica, Jessica informed her that the next time she did it, Jessica was going to pull out that tongue and tie it around her ears. So far it seems to have worked.) "Why do you have her?"

"An ex-friend," Jessica says. "Damn it, Malcolm, I will pay you extra if you walk this fucking dog twice a day."

"You hardly pay me anyway."

"Okay, fine, so I'll pay you more than I'm paying you now, happy?"

"You know we live in the same building, right? Pets aren't allowed in any part of this building."

"That's my problem," she snaps, "not yours. Do you want the dog-walking job or not?"

 

*

 

She asks herself the question, that first night, why she doesn't just take the damn dog to Animal Control. Okay, no, she _does_ know the answer to that. It's because she is not a _complete_ asshole, just about 90% of an asshole, and also, she can imagine the look on Danny's face, not to mention on Matt's face, if she actually did that. She can just about deal with Danny's hurt puppy eyes; it's Matt's look of "I thought you were better than this" that really gets to her. (All of which is happening in her head, and she knows that, but it's still a pretty effective deterrent.)

So she reads the instructions on the dog food bag, and pours out the necessary amount into the dog bowl _with a fucking heart on it_ that Danny left her. The dog just stands there and looks at the bowl and at her. "Oh right, water," Jessica says, and she fills the water bowl, and the dog stands there some more, occasionally looking hopefully at her, but mostly staring at the food with a laser-eyed focus. 

Finally Jessica says, "What is wrong with you, _eat!"_ and it starts to lunge forward and then jerks itself up short and looks at her again. "Eat!" she says, pointing to the food and wondering how stupid this thing is, and finally it lunges all the way to the food, takes a bite with its big slavering jaws, looks at her, hesitates, and then dives in.

Jessica stands there watching it eat like a locomotive with a mouth and lousy table manners, and it dawns on her that whoever used to own this dog trained it not to eat unless it got some kind of command, that she doesn't know, and based on the way it was acting, things probably didn't go well for it if it didn't get the command.

"People are terrible," she says to no one in particular, and she goes off to bed and drinks cheap bourbon until she falls asleep.

 

*

 

She wakes up to find the dog lying not in its nice, probably stupidly expensive dog bed over by the door, but on the floor next to her bed. It seems to be already awake, because it looks up and thumps its ex-tail on the floor.

"No," Jessica says, and rolls over and tries to sleep again.

 

*

 

Malcolm takes his dog-walking duties seriously. He does it way too often for the pittance that's all she can afford to pay him, at least three or four times a day, taking the dog for long rambles around the neighborhood, and that's when he's not driving her bonkers by playing with its ball and squeaky dog toys around the office. Jessica hopes that he bonds with it to the point where he'll take it and just forget about the stupid no-pets-allowed rule. It's not like everyone doesn't ignore that anyway. Nobody associated with the administration of this shitty building ever darkens its door; they haven't had decent building maintenance in years, and rent checks are mailed to an address in Queens. Jessica is personally aware of six cats, a whippet, a parakeet, and a ball python in the building, and she suspects that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Admittedly a 120-lb Rottweiler is in a class all its own, but _still._

"The dog's name is Giant?" Malcolm says, on the first day, as he's kneeling and snapping the leash onto a perfectly cooperative Giant.

"So I'm told."

"Hi there, Giant," Malcolm says in the high-pitched talking-to-dogs voice that's used by people who want dogs to like them but not respect them, and then, "She doesn't answer to it."

"It's only been her name for a few weeks. I don't know. Blame Danny."

"She needs a nice name," Malcolm says. "Like Princess or Lily. A nice name for a nice girl." The dog looks up into his face and offers a slobbering lick. "Yes you are, a very nice girl."

"Did I mention I'm a cat person?" Jessica says.

 

*

 

So this goes on for a while, Malcolm walking the dog and Jessica feeding her and trying to ignore her as much as possible. Malcolm insists on calling her Lily, and Jessica finds herself picking it up too. It's not like she was particularly wedded to the name Giant, and the dog doesn't care either way.

Danny shows up a couple of times to, as he puts it, visit the dog. Jessica tells him the dog's name is Lily now. "Awwww," he says, "such a pretty name for such a sweet baby girl," and cuddles with the dog in a way that is really embarrassing. Jessica seriously hopes no one comes into the office right now. "You know, you should get a license and stuff for her, so she's legal. Matt and I got her checked out with a vet, but we didn't do the other stuff."

"She's not even legal in this building; what do I care what the city thinks?"

"What do you mean?" Danny asks, looking up from the dog shamelessly wiggling all over him.

"It's a no-pets-allowed building, Danny," Jessica says with great patience.

"Oh." It's clear from the look on his face that this is a thought that hadn't even occurred to him.

Two days later, Jessica and (she presumes, after an initial panicked moment) everyone else in the building get an email from their landlord's Hotmail account -- normally a black hole into which emails vanish -- announcing that there's been a change to their lease and a maximum of two (2) pets are now allowed per tenant, plz see attached.

Jessica calls Danny and as soon as he's made it to the "hel--" point of answering, she snaps out, "Did you bribe my landlord?"

"What?" Danny says. "Oh, hi, Jessica! No."

"You did _something,"_ she says suspiciously. "How did you even find him? No one can ever find him. There are toilets in this building that have been backed up for years."

"I asked Jeri."

Oh. Dammit. She wishes she'd thought of that.

"Anyway," Danny says, "it's not that much of a thing, it's just that Jeri drafted a new set of building rules really quick and the property company that owns your building signed it, that's all."

"I have a headache," Jessica says, and hangs up on him. Yelling at Danny is like yelling at a ... er ... She looks down at the dog at her feet, sleeping with its massive head on a rawhide toy. At the very least, this will probably be good for the six cats and et cetera. She just wishes he'd learn to _ask_ before flinging fistfuls of money at lawyers, but maybe not being able to figure out those finer gradations of social niceties among the plebeian set goes along with being a Rand.

"So I guess we're going to have to get you a license or whatever," she says, and Lily lifts her head and points her blunt snout up at Jessica with a little bit of tongue sticking out, and jerks her inadequate tail.

 

*

 

She is walking the newly licensed and now officially-named Lily herself for a change when she runs into, of all people, Matt Murdock, cane tucked under one arm and the other hand holding the leash of a very large German shepherd, not even a block from her office. They're not especially close to Hell's Kitchen, so unless Matt decided to walk for two miles in February, she senses a conspiracy.

If Matt tries to foist off another dog on her, she is going to punch him into next week.

Lily drags on her lead, which she almost never does. Jessica stops pulling back on it when she sees Lily's stump tail wagging like mad, but it turns out that it's not for Matt, it's for the other dog. Lily doesn't seem to particularly like most dogs, but she has a delighted reunion with this one, while Matt gives Jessica one of his little Matt smiles and says, "Hi, Jessica."

"Hi, Murdock. I mean this with all due respect, but if you're here to give me a dog, fuck off."

"What? No. Foggy's cousin adopted this one." Matt scritches the top of the dog's head. "Meet Prince Bright-Eyes. Their kids named him."

"Wonderful. This is Lily. My, uh, dog walker named her." At this point she is pretty sure that the arrangement she has with Malcolm is more like co-parenting, but there is no way in hell she's telling Matt that.

Lily turns her attention from her dog friend to Matt, pushing her scarred head under his hand. Matt rubs her ears. "Getting along well?" he asks, and Jess suffers a moment of profound annoyance before she realizes he is talking to her, not the dog. (Unlike Danny and Malcolm, who both hold entire conversations with dogs; she wishes she didn't know this.)

"Yeah," Jessica says, the admission dragged out of her on fishhooks. "I guess."

"Good," Matt says. He gives Lily one final pat. "Take care of her."

He's already walking away with Prince Bright-Eyes before she decides that he _was_ in fact talking to the dog, at least with that last comment. Goddammit.

 

*

 

It's late at night when she appreciates having Lily around the most, not that she will _ever_ admit this. Late at night, when the memories come. Late at night, when there's no one to talk to, and not even a chance of anyone walking into her office, not even the possibility of wandering down the hall on a paper-thin pretext to see if Malcolm is around. Late at night, when what she really wants to escape is herself, and oblivion is the only way to do that. Or at least it used to be.

"Fetch," she says, and bounces a tennis ball off the wall. It goes skittering into the bathroom. Lily wags her stubby tail and thunders after it.

Someone bangs on the underside of the floor. Jessica tries to remember who's down there. Oh right, that obnoxious old dude who keeps trying to buttonhole her in the hall and talk about how much sketchier the neighborhood keeps getting, while glancing at Malcolm.

Lily comes back, drops a slobber-covered ball into her lap, and stares at her with bright eyes, panting.

"Go get it, girl," she says somewhat more cheerfully, and throws the ball again; if the units are both arranged on the same plan, this would be right above Racist Jerkwad's bedroom.

Lily goes thundering off again, toenails clacking, and Jessica smiles to herself. She can keep this up all night.


End file.
